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How CIOs Can Get Better Control Over Their Data Center Business Operations

CEO and Co-Founder at Correlata - The Business IT Company. He has more than 21 years of experience in the ICT business domain.

We are living in an exciting and challenging age, where innovation is simply part of life. I call this the "digital transformation wave," and with it, issues are arising in data center management and efficiency. The need for more bandwidth and distributed computing (DC) capacity has encouraged business owners to seek out technical solutions -- such as servers, storage, switches and backups -- or to start to evaluating other options for speeding up services, such as moving to the cloud.

However, simply purchasing more hardware and software or moving into the cloud is not always the answer. So what should companies consider and do?

There is no scientific answer: It all depends on the company size, business domain and industry regulations. However, I've seen that one factor is almost always the same: as DCs get larger and more complex, CIOs are losing control of their operations, and losing their credibility with company leadership. With this growth, they can't always understand or quantify the real operating value and risks in their data centers, or measure the vital efficiencies of their DCs.

Making Distributed Computing More Efficient

Companies are starting to understand that they need to change the status quo in the managed IT field. It's not about automation and optimization anymore; it's about efficiency and breaking the silo effect. Specifically, it's about efficiency between the different vendors (I call it the IT maze), efficiency between the different IT teams, and efficiency between IT and the rest of the company. This is the only way I see for companies to be able to achieve their business strategies faster, while at the same time reducing expenses.

For example, one major challenge is the way data centers are designed doesn’t allow them to wisely “right manage” and “right size” a business' IT needs. The data center lacks visibility into key business indicators, and can spend too much time on troubleshooting and preventing performance issues.Companies are looking for solutions that will help them become greener, but with the increasing amount of information and data, this is a real challenge.

This digital transformation and the data distribution age forces us to be able not only to deliver better computing power, but at the same time implement new policies in restrictions across the entire company operations, including IT, so that everything is in alignment with the company's business goals and strategy.

From my point of view, it’s all about giving control back to senior management, enabling companies to use their investments more effectively, and providing unique insights into the daily wellbeing of IT business operations so that they are not just up and running, but highly available and resilient in their design intentions and business objectives.